That was the comment of a Head Start director after two cars collided at a busy Albuquerque intersection and both cars crashed into the front of a daycare and preschool.

As the Task Force in Orlando Florida completes there work on a new ordinance to protect daycare centers in Orange County (see the press coverage HERE ) this event in Albuquerque proves the point. Two cars collide in an intersection and both of them slam over the sidewalk and into the parking lot of a daycare -- but instead of tragedy as we saw at the KinderCare in Orlando, this daycare had a barrier in place that protected the babies and children just inside the building. To see the video and hear the interview, please review the excellent coverage from KRQE news HERE.

This is a good example of why ASTM took steps to create a test standard for safety barriers and bollards. This new ASTM standard - F3016 - will allow architects and engineers and city planners and daycare providers to understand that protection is necessary, that heavy vehicles moving at high speed can kill, and that with a small amount of planning and wise expenditure of funds, children can be safe in the very place parents drop them off every day.

So what could have been a tragedy turns out to be a wonderful lesson on planning ahead. I hope that the city and county representatives in Florida take heed of the this lesson and listen to their task force -- because lives depend on people doing the right thing for the right reasons.

The driver of a Lexus ended up 90 feet inside of a AAA office in Fresno California this afternoon according to the Fresno Bee. Seven people were injured, and the car traveled 90 feet inside the building before being stopped by a support column. See the Bee's great reporting from the scene (at photo credit) HERE.While this is reported to have been a case where the driver had the car in drive instead of reverse, and somehow panicked and pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor, the question still needs to be asked: how do we know when a car is out of control NOT because of driver inputs, but rather my mechanical or software flaws in the vehicle itself? Lawsuits are being fought right now, and NHTSA and other federal agencies are hard at work studying the problem. But for the people trying to understand what happened from media reports, this is a limitation that needs further study.The Storefront Safety Council is starting a research project on this topic of vehicle failure versus driver error. We are doing so for a variety of reasons, the most basic of which is that it is important to be accurate about causation in order to be accurate about prevention. In terms of preventing injuries to people on sidewalks or inside stores, the causation of a vehicle-into-building crash is less important than the means of protecting people and property against errant vehicles in the first place. Bollards or safety barriers do not care if the vehicle has jumped the curb due to being in the wrong gear, or the driver under the influence, or a mechanical or other failure with the car -- the bollards just stops the crash from happening. But in terms of understanding what is going on and for policy makers to make best use of information, that information and underlying data needs to be accurate.Recent high profile accidents that have had these types of issues are many -- our resources are limited but we will do our best to find out what we can and report the results here and on the Storefront Safety Council website.

The press in Orange County Florida, scene of a recent fatal crash into a KinderCare day care center, is reporting that local officials are beginning the process to study the extent of various vulnerable locations in the area and to begin to look for "best practices" to use as the basis of a local ordinance requiring safety barriers at such facilities. (For excellent coverage, see the Orlando Sentinel coverage HERE.)As readers of this blog and the many members of the Storefront Safety Council LinkedIn group are aware, these types of crashes are very common. With regard to the efforts of city and county officials to determine what types of barriers might be effective, affordable, and suitable for inclusion in any local ordinance that they may consider, I suggest a review of the information included in these pages, as well as that which is available on the Storefront Safety Council website. In addition, there is additional information available for review in Standardization News, the magazine for ASTM International. ASTM is in the process of finalizing a test standard for low-speed (non-highway) barriers and bollards which would be suitable for applications such as day care centers, medical clinics, senior centers, and other exposed facilities. For information on the Low Speed Vehicle Barrier standard see the ASTM article HERE.I first advocated for the creation of this standard seven years ago; it was very apparent that the standards and engineering that were applied to anti-terrorist barriers and highway safety barriers were not appropriate for applications in front of strorefronts, restaurants, and child care centers. As our research continued and we began to get a better handle on how frequent these crashes are and the extent of the monetary damages, injuries, and fatalities that resulted from them, others in the industry stepped up to take this problem on. To their credit, ASTM agreed that this was a suitable area of study and an area in need of regulation. As the Orlando Sentinel report shows, there is not at this time a national standard for either the types of barriers to be deployed, or the types of places where they should be required. This proposed standard goes a long way to making a national standard practical.Here is an excerpt from the introduction for the proposed standard:"A majority of applications for barriers is to protect people or property from accidental or intentional vehicle incursions. One example is protecting pedestrians or students from vehicles on adjacent surface streets. Another example is protecting store fronts or mall entrances from vehicles which might approach at high speed due to operator pedal error. Anti-ram and security applications also need to be addressed, for those times when vehicles are employed as a means to gain illegal access. Currently no testing standards exist, and consequently, specifiers do not know what type of products to deploy and how to qualify either a product or a manufacturer. As a result, the public is left undefended in too many instances." Full text can be found HERE.The science of vehicle barriers is well known, and the engineering is not difficult. There is no need to spend fortunes and there is no need to turn the front of buildings into fortresses. Preventing vehicle incursions is something that is done efficiently, effectively and affordably every day in retail areas, school campuses, pedestrian areas, and commercial and municipal buildings. I applaud the efforts in Orange County to find best practices, and after a determination, to enact an ordinance that requires such safety measures in front of at-risk facilities. I would just remind everyone that storefront crashes like the one at KinderCare happen 50 to 60 times EVERY DAY. Please do your research, make your determinations, and get your ordinance in place. Kids, teachers, and parents are at risk every day until you do.And it doesn't have to be that way.

Copyright 2018 by Rob Reiter. All rights reserved. Content may be freely copied and distributed subject to inclusion of this copyright notice and our World Wide Web URL http://www.storefrontcrashexpert.com.